


The Cure

by EarthsickWithoutYou



Category: Doctor Who, Whouffaldi - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsickWithoutYou/pseuds/EarthsickWithoutYou
Summary: When the Doctor comforts Clara following a difficult experience, they begin to give into their feelings for one another.  Afterwards, they decide to take a bit of time apart to try and figure out how they truly feel, what they want, and if they should continue to explore the romantic dimension of their relationship.  What will each decide to do?





	1. Chapter 1

“Don’t follow me,” Clara demanded, her voice cold and brittle, as they ran back through the doors of the TARDIS, safe at last. She practically hurtled down the hall to her room, the Doctor naturally hot on her heels.

“I said, *don’t* follow me!” She repeated angrily, charging into her room and then into the bathroom. Clara wished she had a door to slam behind her because that would be so damn satisfying, but since all she had was a future-space door that gently slid shut, she had to make due with her words of harsh dismissal. Worst of all, she wasn’t even upset with the Doctor, only with herself. His undeserved sympathy amplified her grief.

“It wasn’t your fault, Clara,” she heard him say just outside the door. He’d entered her quarters, then, despite her dismissal of him. Her heart lifted, but then she savagely smacked that instinct down. Clara heard his voice, pleading and close. She stepped into the shower and put her back against the cold, reassuringly merciless and hard wall, her hand springing out almost randomly to switch the water on. She let her body slide gradually until she hit the floor, and then she let the pain out. The aching in her throat exploded into tears and she scowled, hating her own weakness.

“It’s not your fault.” The Doctor put his ear to the door again, waiting. Waiting for Clara’s voice, some indication that ultimately, she would be okay. His hearts sank. She was silent except for the occasional sob, which he could just about make out over the sound of the water bursting forth from the shower-head.

He sank to the floor, not knowing what to do with his hands, which seemed to want to break down the door to make sure she was alright, or his arms, which felt compelled to somehow wrap around her when any such touch felt impossible. Clara didn’t think she deserved a hug after what had just happened, and he knew it. Hated it. Knew her. Loved her. It hurt. 

“Let me in, Clara,” he called loudly, and then he murmured it again softly into his fingers. He ran his hands from his unruly hair down to his forehead and cheeks before returning the touch to his mouth, the gesture he used to stave off his overwhelmed distraction. Then the Doctor whispered the words into his palm, dropping his head to his knees, helpless. “Please let me in.”

“I’m in the shower,” Clara blurted, and he cringed at her prideful facade before realizing what a mirror it held up to his own habitual artifice. God, why shouldn’t she hide in a shower and pretend to be okay? He’d been hiding in countless places for thousands of years and he hadn’t been okay since before he could remember.

“Alright, I’ll go. I’m sorry, Clara,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. 

“Doctor,” Clara replied bluntly, “Come in.” 

He couldn’t imagine why she would have changed her mind so suddenly, but he went to her without hesitation, immediately upset when he pulled back the curtain and saw her sitting there completely forlorn, tear-streaked face staring up at him. “People died, Doctor,” she blurted, trying to keep her voice even as the tears kept falling. She wiped the latest few away with the heel of her hand. “Because I made a mistake.”

It seemed strange, yet so utterly *them* that they should find themselves sitting side by side, fully clothed, in a shower that was running for no particular reason at this point. Yet he never would have left her there alone when she’d asked him in. The Doctor joined her, trying to come up with words to assuage her guilt.

“You made the best decision you could with what you knew,” he reminded her. “All you wanted to do was save every one of those people from the danger they faced, and you did manage to protect a lot of them. Look at me! I got lured into a trap by the enemy, leaving you to make impossible calls all on your own. Do you know how that makes me feel? I promised myself I’d never do that to you again, force you to make the life-and-death choices.”

“I know,” Clara said. “But I’ve traveled with you long enough by now that I should be able to handle situations like that capably.”

“And so you did!” He argued. “You’ve been with me long enough to know that I’ve made a million mistakes, cost plenty of lives because I chose box A instead of box B. Trying to do the maths and save the day is never going to come easy, no matter how experienced or brave you are. Just ask the Time Lords sometime what they think of my way of solving problems, in case you need to check if I’m exaggerating.”

“That’s different!” Clara answered, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to block out the memory of those innocent civilians dying at the hands of a cruel dictator’s troops back there on the alien planet they’d just departed. Yes, they’d managed to defeat the villains in the end, but after so much damage had been done on her watch, it felt like an almost shallow victory. 

She could have stopped it, could have saved them all instead of just *most.* How? Well, she would never know that answer now. *Maybe there was no way to save them all,* a little voice in her mind suggested. Clara wasn’t ready to let that little voice take over and smother her guilt, so she pushed the thought away. If it wasn’t her fault, why did it feel so horribly like it was?

“It’s not different,” the Doctor insisted, taking her face in his hands. She gazed at him, at a loss for words. “There’s no one braver or more capable than you, Clara Oswald. We all make mistakes, and as absurdly simplistic as that always sounds, it is *always* true. You did a lot of good down there. Be proud of yourself, and be kind to yourself, above all.”

“I can’t!” She said, pressing her knees to her chest, dropping her head down dejectedly. 

“Do it for me,” he suggested. How he longed to pull her into his embrace, show her physically that everything would somehow be alright, even though that made no sense given what she’d just been through. He knew that it would take time for her to forgive herself. The Doctor feared that a hug from him now would be a dreadful imposition. He didn’t know how to be that sort of person, anyway. 

He hadn’t known until recently that he wanted to be that sort of person, for Clara. Only for Clara. And he wanted it very badly.

She sighed as if she had read his mind and shifted from her tightly bound position before melting against him, resting her head on his chest. The warm water fell around them, having long since soaked the Doctor’s white shirt and black trousers. He lifted his hands and found Clara’s back, very gently returning her touch, trying to find out if he could do it right. Her denim shirt was stuck to her skin, clinging against her black leggings. Clara moved again, drawing nearer, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle and taking a series of deep breaths, letting each one go a little less shakily than the one before. 

The Doctor held her as if she was so fragile. Because even though she wasn’t, even though she was stronger than she even knew herself, Clara was that precious to him. There was no other way to handle her than with extreme care, not least of all because she deserved nothing but the best, most attentive treatment he could give her. The Doctor had made too many missteps in their relationship so far, too many insensitive absurdities to count, and the way he managed her need of him now would not be one of them.

She drew back slightly and looked at him as if investigating him somehow. He wondered desperately what she was thinking, then shook his head and softly touched her cheek, where a bruise was blossoming from the skirmish they’d just been caught up in. “You’re hurt,” he whispered. Clara leaned into his hand and he let it rest there a bit longer. Maybe he wasn’t entirely useless in this sort of situation after all, the Doctor mused, his spirits lifting slightly. Being of use to her right now would make him feel so much less like a bad influence and a bother.

Without thinking, Clara kissed his hand, covering it with her own as he stared at her, transfixed. She loved the feeling of his skin under her lips so much that she placed her hands and knees on the floor and moved in to kiss his cheek. 

For some reason, Clara’s slow and tender motions seemed to have placed the Doctor in a state of hypnotized fascination which he could not resist. He held still while Clara kissed his other cheek, her lips warm and moist, the water falling from above the only hint of a sound. Between them, there was nothing but silence now, for the first time ever. Her eyes seemed to beg for some sign from him, so he kissed her forehead, her cheek, her neck, slow and sure as her own actions had been. Soon, they were both exchanging kisses, running through the sequence of the places their lips had each touched once; but they were moving faster now, increasingly hungry for the next kiss, until Clara pressed her mouth to his and the world seemed to stop.

Clara sighed against the Doctor’s lips. *This, yes this!* her heart cried out with a sharp pang of longing as he returned the kiss, their arms tightening around each other and their mouths opening, tongues caressing each other, everything wrong and right, velvety smooth and wet, urgent and undeniable. Darkness exploding into blinding lights.

“Clara,” the Doctor gasped when they took a breath apart for a moment. She registered his surprise and confusion, then watched them magnify as she shed her wet shirt, raising further implications. Clara watched him watching her, torn between stopping this and giving into what he wanted, to their mutual desire, the water running down her slicked brown hair and over her shoulders, trickling down to her half-bared cleavage. They fell together again like mad creatures, drunk on the taste and feel of each other, drowning in it, comforted by it, drawn to follow it knowing that they could never really get enough. 

“Clara,” he whispered again between kisses, one of his hands tangled in her hair as the other firmly held her by the back. Clara’s own voice didn’t seem to be functioning, though his name rang through her as profoundly as it ever had. She touched his silver hair, darkened by the water, as the Doctor moved his lips again to her neck, then tasted her skin all the way down to the top of her bra, which he traced with one finger. 

“Don’t stop,” Clara said, quiet and fierce, but he hesitated, lacing their fingers together and smiling sadly.

“I don’t want to,” the Doctor explained seriously, “but I have to. If you only knew how much I want this, how completely sure I was that this was never ever going to happen, then you’d understand. But the timing isn’t right, Clara, after what you’ve just been through, we just can’t.”

Clara smiled, surrendering to his common sense, and reached up to turn the shower off. She stood and reached for his hand. “Nothing saying we have to stay apart though, is there?” She spoke the words beseechingly and he shook his head.

“Nothing at all,” he agreed. “I’ll go and change and come back, and we can…talk, or just not talk, whatever you need.”

“Just you,” Clara admitted, kissing his palm and then releasing him. “That’s all.”

After he’d gone, she peeled off the rest of her damp clothes and stepped back into the shower to clean up in earnest. Rubbing a soapy loofah absent-mindedly over her body, she tried to understand the entirety of what she felt, but it was somehow out of reach. How could a day so utterly terrible end with one of the best things that had ever happened to her? Why should she be allowed to find peace despite her inability to save this day and set everything right?

Clara dried off and ran a comb through her hair. She pulled on a light blue t-shirt that was faded from years of use and love, and then her favorite pair of grey sweatpants, unglamorous and perfectly soothing. She started putting the pieces together in her mind. Her encounter with the Doctor had miraculously reminded her how to breathe, had suggested to Clara that she deserved to be okay. He had begged her to be kind to herself for his sake, if not for her own. Clara felt she could be strong enough to do it for both of them, and gratitude for his reassurance and advice made her smile. 

The Doctor reentered her quarters a few minutes later, his hair looking as though his idea of styling it was to run his long fingers through it until it stopped being quite so damp and matted. Clara couldn’t help a small chortle. She liked the sight of his t-shirt and hooded sweater, a welcome addition to his wardrobe of late that suggested he was learning to relax more. The idea of doing that was a lesson Clara was still trying to teach herself to embrace. They were so alike sometimes that it brought her a strange, exultant thrill and yet comforted her at the same time.

“Can I get you some tea?” the Doctor asked nervously, rubbing his hands together. Clara sat up against the pillows on her bed, her legs curled up. “How about some hot cocoa? Or something to eat?”

“Just come here, please?” Clara requested, reaching one hand out. The Doctor took it and climbed onto the bed beside her. Clara’s grasp was everything he needed to stay tethered to gravity. She drew the pillows down beneath her head and lay down, tugging his sleeve gently and giving him a supplicating look. He smiled gently and joined her, closing his eyes as she laid against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her snugly. Their breathing evened out, anxieties smoothed away. 

He smelled her hair and kissed her forehead, innocent pleasures he’d never have presumed to indulge until they had somehow dropped their defenses. Clara inhaled and he realized that she was smelling his skin through his t-shirt. She smiled contentedly and nestled closer.

The Doctor felt a realization dawn on him that for the first time in his long life, he was finally ready to stop running.


	2. Chapter 2

Clara’s eyes fluttered open the next morning and she reached automatically for the empty space beside her in the bed. Empty…but still warm, she realized. She sat up and squinted through sleepy eyes at the Doctor, who sat at the end of the bed, staring at his hands, deep in thought.

“Good morning,” she said simply, and flopped down on her stomach, propping her head up in her hands and smiling up at him softly. “You look worried.”

“Good morning,” the Doctor replied quietly, his voice revealing an emotional restraint that concerned her. Was he going to try and pretend they hadn’t finally put an end to all of the insane repressing of emotion between them? Clara didn’t think she could go back to living like that again. “I am worried,” he admitted. 

“Because of what happened between us, or because of what almost happened?” She asked, and he shook his head.

“Everything, Clara. What are we doing?” 

Clara sat up again and tentatively laid her hand over his. He didn’t pull away, at which she was deeply relieved. She knew exactly how good he was at building walls, especially since she shared the talent herself.

“I’m not worried, Doctor. I’m grateful. Thank you for being there for me when I needed you the most, thank you for getting me through an awful situation and helping me to see that I wasn’t to blame. And…” His expression told her he was dismissing the idea that he had done anything special or amazing for her, but she wasn’t having it. Damn his humility and his insistence on painting himself as useless or wrong when the truth couldn’t be further away. She’d been a wreck, feeling destroyed and empty, and he had been her cure. 

Reflecting on this, and how much it meant to her, Clara continued bravely, “And thank you for opening up to me and showing me that all of these feelings, the ones that I’ve always had for you, aren’t just one-sided.”

“How could you have ever thought that?” the Doctor asked, his eyes glazed with unshed tears. This was hard for him, being honest, being vulnerable. Not knowing if he was right to do so. He asked himself what he could possibly have been thinking to kiss her like that the night before, knocking down the domino that threatened to send their relationship spiraling into disaster. But then he wondered how he could have helped kissing her, and came up with no answers.

Clara pressed her lips to his hand. “I want to be with you, I want to give this a chance, Doctor. There it is, pure and simple.”

“How can it be simple, Clara? You know what I am and what it means to any potential relationship between us. That’s why I’ve kept myself so closed off when you’ve been all I could think about, and that’s why we’ve got to be very careful not to take things any further before we consider the consequences. And then there’s what you went through yesterday and how it effected you. You’re not in the right place to be making decisions like this rashly.”

“It can be simple because that’s what love is, Doctor,” Clara assured him, seeing that he was totally overwhelmed by fears. There was the fear of ever hurting her and the fear of one day losing her due to her shorter human lifespan. “But I understand everything you’re saying, I really do. Please know that I’m in my right mind, that I mean what I say and it won’t change.”

“Clara,” he said, suddenly noticing the sadness and disappointment in her eyes. He pulled her into his arms just like that and she rested her head on his shoulder, her legs lying over his as if it were the most natural thing that could ever be. Pure, Clara thought, simple, true, and right. “I love you too,” he confessed, caressing her back, kissing her head. A tear slid down her cheek and she laughed, the sound bursting from the startling clarity of a joy like nothing she had ever known.

“What are we going to do?” She whispered, listening to the pounding of his hearts, holding onto him for dear life.

“How about…” the Doctor thought of an idea, and even though he didn’t like the idea, he knew it was the best solution. “How about if we take a break from each other? Say, one month. It will let you breathe, Clara, let you think about every single implication of being involved with me, the danger and the tragedy that could come out of it in spite of all the happiness. See if you still feel the same and want to make the same choice after some time has gone by and you’ve had some distance from me.”

“Will you be doing the same?” Clara asked, “Taking the time to think about if being with me is what you want?”

“That’s not even a question,” the Doctor immediately replied. “Of course I want to be with you, of course I don’t want to be apart from you, even for a month. But this is what’s best for you. I’ll spend the time missing you, prepared to respect whatever choice you make. If you come back and say you want this, then I will be all in, even though I know I might be crazy to risk it. But if you want to leave me and never return, or if you want to continue our travels, but only as friends, then that will be fine, Clara, I promise you.”

Clara took his face in her hands and studied his adorable, handsome, stressed-out features. This break was what was best for him, too, she realized. Opening the floodgates after all of the boldfaced lying day after day between them, all the pretending not to love each other as they did, it was a lot to process for someone so utterly unaccustomed to that level of emotional vulnerability. She forced herself to smile even though the idea of spending time apart broke her heart. Because she knew that it would be well worth it in the end.

“Okay, Doctor. One month.”  
********************************************************************************

“Now, no cheating,” Clara insisted with a slightly forced giggle, trying to lighten the mood as he walked her home. “You have to wait a whole, real month, not just travel forward a month and pretend you stuck it out like me.”

“Boo,” the Doctor complained jovially, committed as she was to making the best of this difficult separation. 

“Hey!” Clara said all of a sudden, nodding to a bookstore they were passing. “There’s a photobooth in here. Let’s make something we can keep as a momento in the meantime. What do you say?”

“Alright, then,” he agreed, following her eagerly into the booth. They made several of their most ferociously ridiculous faces as the camera started to flash, but then their eyes met and the silliness fell away. The Doctor and Clara stared at each other for a heartbeat, their longing deeply evident. Then they leaned forward at the same time and kissed, common sense flying out the window for that precious moment.

When their lips parted, Clara grinned. “Oh, this is gonna be good!” she squealed, relishing the thought of having a little piece of them to hold onto for the next four weeks. She plucked the two strips of photos up, two exact copies of the shots that ranged from hilarious to anything but. “Here you go,” she said, pressing the Doctor’s copies into his palm. He smiled down at the images thoughtfully, then slipped them into his trousers’ pocket. 

Once they had arrived at her front door, they both hesitated, knowing that this would be the hardest part. “Clara Oswald,” the Doctor remarked affectionately, and she gazed at him in suspense. To her surprise, he unzipped his black hoodie and took it off, then placed it around her shoulders. “There,” he said happily, “That’s better.”

“Thanks,” Clara smiled. She zipped the sweater up, immediately loving the soft way it felt against her skin and the way it smelled of the Doctor, like a forest after a thunderstorm. Clear and sweet and true, resilient and powerful, aching and reaching. That was how he felt to her, and how he made Clara feel, too. Nothing was better than being with him. 

“Thanks,” she repeated, trying again to use humor to make this easier, despite the inherent impossibility of it, “For removing at least one of the insane amounts of layers you’ve got on. Who wears a sweater under a sweater?” Clara lifted the hem of the hole-ridden sweater he still wore over a white t-shirt. “What even *is* this sweater, Doctor? I keep meaning to ask.”

“You love it,” he grinned, and she laughed, for real this time.

“You’re damn right I do,” Clara admitted. “A month, Doctor.”

“I’ll see you then,” he agreed, pain flashing in his eyes as he prepared to leave her.

*This is what she needs,* the Doctor told himself firmly. *So you do it, you walk away now, and give her some space.*

*This is what he needs,* Clara thought, holding herself back from her instinct to just blow off this whole idea, bring him inside and make out for hours. God, that would be good. But not yet. *He needs to sort this all out and be sure it’s what he wants. He said he was sure, but did he mean it? Now he can decide,* Clara thought. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t be late,” she whispered in his ear as he smiled.

********************************************************************************

Clara sank back into her everyday London existence, making an extra effort to fully enjoy every one of her typical human experiences and not resent them for being comparatively mundane. She had Sunday dinners with her family, she went out to the pubs with her friends and demolished every quiz with a skill that made them all do double-takes at her accumulated knowledge. And Clara taught her students with the same enthusiasm for their learning and growth that had always inspired her and would ever remind her that she was, at heart, a teacher. These parts of Clara’s life were important and they always would be.

But she thought of the Doctor through it all. And with each day that passed, she was only more and more certain of how much she wanted to be with him, completely with him, for always. There was nothing they could do about the difference in the time they would have to live, but if Clara could spend what time she had with the Doctor, she would know with one hundred percent certainty that it was never wasted. 

One night, as she was kicking back and watching a film with her friend Anna, Clara was knocked right out of one of her trademark Doctor-dazes (full minutes of time which passed with her in a Doctor-related thought tangent) by a piece of popcorn that pelted her in the forehead. She popped it into her mouth unhesitatingly and nudged Anna with her foot. “What?” Clara laughed.

“‘What?’ What planet are you on, for starters?” Anna’s kind green eyes sparkled with concerned interest. “Clara, Meg Ryan just pretended to have an orgasm in a restaurant and you didn’t even laugh. I mean, that scene just gets funnier over time! Wait a minute!” She paused the movie and sat up rail-straight, her face taking on an expression of absolute seriousness. “Are you thinking about….Mr. Mystery?”

“Mr. Mystery?” Clara giggled and took a sip of wine, trying to evade Anna’s investigative attitude, to no avail. “Who is *that*?”

“You tell me,” Anna insisted, flouncing back down to her proper slouching position on the couch, her shiny blonde hair flying out around her, her fingers immediately digging back into the bowl of popcorn. She chewed contemplatively and added, “You’ve mentioned him before, this friend of yours that you go off with every now and then and won’t say who he is or what you get up to. I’ve been patient long enough, no bestie could have waited any longer! Give up the goods, Oswald!”

Clara pondered how much to share with Anna, realizing that it would probably be quite a relief to talk to someone else about this. “Well,” she began, and Anna rubbed her hands together excitedly, an expression of *finally!* lighting up her features.

“It’s complicated. We travel together, we both love it — we have adventures, we solve mysteries, we get into all kinds of trouble, and usually out of it again. I thought that’d be all it ever was, this overwhelming friendship that sort of redefined how much I could love another person and how it could change me in all the most amazing ways.” Clara took a beat to think about her own words. She didn’t know that she’d ever tried to explain the Doctor so honestly before out loud. 

“Clara,” Anna observed, a bit astounded, “You’re absolutely, butt-crazy in love with this guy.”

“I know that,” Clara admitted, smiling dreamily. She looked down at the Doctor’s hoodie and began playing with the zipper. “We’re taking some time apart to sort of assess things, think about if we should really be together romantically or if it might be a mistake.”

“Hell’s bells, Clara, are you totally daft?” Anna shook her head disapprovingly. “*Anything* could be a mistake, and there’s no way to know if you don’t try! You’re already in love, what could be worse than never knowing what might have been? You’d be like Billy Crystal if he never went running through a traffic jam looking for Meg! Just awful!”

“I thought that was Matthew McConaughey running through the traffic jam to get to Kate Hudson,” Clara interrupted.

“It’s both,” Anna corrected her. “What’s making you wait, Clara, what would make you hesitate even for a moment to be with this man?”

“Erm…” How best to explain, even to herself, Clara wondered. “Well, there’s an age difference.”

“Nothing but a number,” Anna put in dismissively.

“And we’re both quite quick-tempered, stubborn, and always think we’re right.”

“Oh, really, I hadn’t noticed that about you.”

Clara showered Anna with popcorn and they both laughed like crazy.

“You know what that sounds like, though?” Anna resumed when she could get a word out, “Totally serious. That sounds *hot.*”

Clara blushed as she thought about it and had to admit, “Know what? You’re right.” She ran a hand through her hair and sat back, staring up at the ceiling, her thoughts drifting up to the stars.

“I bet he’s cute, too,” Anna guessed, still determined to hear all the juicy details.

“Oh, God,” Clara sighed, “Is he cute. He’s all…tall and slim, and everything about his body just falls into place perfectly like in a totally unfair way, and then he’s got these eyes that are a different shade of blue in every light, each one more beautiful than the one before, and I can’t even begin to tell you, Anna.”

“I think you just did, love,” Anna pointed out. 

“I’m still thinking,” Clara reminded her friend, “We took a month, and it’s the last week, and my mind is very carefully and logically weighing the pros and cons of pursuing this relationship.”

“*Right,*” Anna conceded, “Well you go ahead and think. Let’s get back to the movie, you tiny, lovestruck puppy.”

“Shut it,” Clara complained, trying again to focus on the movie. Oh. She really shouldn’t have gone along with this choice of film, should she? Honestly. She could have slapped herself upside the head. When Harry Met Sally? *Ugh!* Every scene seemed to draw an exact parallel with some memory she had of the Doctor and play with her emotions mercilessly. And yet, it felt strangely…good, Clara realized. Thinking about him kept making her happier the more she did it.

The rest of the week went by in a rush, almost as if Clara had willed it so. She would have expected it to drag, but her resolute manner of putting her all into as many activities as she could kept her busy and her spirits high. Maybe part of it was the increasingly unbearable, yet insanely blissful sense of anticipation that was building more and more each day. Clara’s mood kept lifting higher and higher with each day that she crossed off in TARDIS-blue marker on her calendar.

At last, Sunday morning arrived. But it found Clara still asleep in her bed far longer than planned because her alarm hadn’t gone off. “No!” She practically shrieked when she glanced at the time upon waking. She was going to be late. Maybe he would think she wasn’t coming! 

She had agreed to meet the Doctor at the bookshop just down the street from her place, the spot where they had taken the photos which were tucked lovingly into the side of Clara’s bedroom mirror. Of course, her intention had been to get all dolled up in one of her prettiest outfits, putting her make-up on with great care and styling her hair to its best advantage.

She sat up in bed and considered the time, then shrugged. “Screw it,” she decided, settling for brushing her teeth and cramming her feet into her slippers before she went running out the front door. Clara came scrambling to a stop when she got to the bookstore and looked back and forth in front of the entrance. No Doctor. Perhaps inside? 

She pushed the door open, causing the bell at the top to tinkle merrily. Clad in her pj’s, Clara ignored the confused stares of the people who were sipping coffee and perusing the novels on the used shelves.

Where was he? Clara scanned the shop, and almost started to think perhaps he had thought better of entangling himself with her any further; the risk just outweighed the rewards, she could understand that, even though it would tear her up inside and obliterate her soul. She’d be okay, though, it was not a problem, absolutely not, and *where was he?*

“That’s quite an outfit,” a familiar Scottish voice drawled behind her. Clara spun around, looking up at his annoyingly knowing face, and quelled the urge to throw her arms around him.

“Took you long enough,” she said with a coy little shoulder lift, tapping her foot on the floor. She looked down and remembered that her slippers had little Star Wars droid-heads on them, BB-8 bobbing up and down with her every step. She smoothed down the front of her frog-patterned, buttoned-up pajamas with dignity and cleared her throat.

“You ran right past me,” he revealed, clasping his hands behind his back. 

“Ah, sorry,” she answered, “I slept late. I sort of panicked, thinking I’d miss you and you might assume I’d decided not to come—”

“That would have been disappointing,” the Doctor smiled. “This is much better.”

“So, how did your thinking go?” She pressed, crossing her arms.

“Oh, pretty good, pretty good, and you?” His eyes darted back and forth, revealing that despite his casual demeanor, he was nervous as could be. Clara noticed that since *he* hadn’t slept late, he’d put on his best Doctor-y suit for her, the dark blue with the red lining, and with that crisp white shirt underneath that she wouldn’t mind ripping off with great abandon.

“I’ve had a lovely time for myself, back home,” Clara admitted, “But I’m wondering if you’d mind very much…though you’ve made it relatively clear in the past that it wasn’t an option, or that you thought it shouldn’t be an option. I thought you thought maybe I didn’t want it to be, even though I did…”

“Clara, I’m getting dizzy,” the Doctor said, trying to follow her speech.

“Well, I’m getting to the good bit, so just do your best to figure it out, will you? Anyway, I’m wondering…would you be my boyfriend, Doctor? Y’know, officially, because it’s relatively clear to pretty much everyone even vaguely adjacent to either of our lives that you already are, so—”

Before Clara could get on with any more of the detailed babble at which they both excelled, the Doctor had swept her into his arms and a movie-quality kiss, dipping her backwards and everything. “Only if you’ll be my girlfriend, Clara Oswald,” he proposed with a grin.


End file.
